For a number of years now Government backed bodies have sought public submissions on life-related issues hoping to boost their claim that their recommendations are in line with public demand.

The public have responded in massive numbers, and encouragingly, the majority of submissions have been pro-life, with most people wanting human life in its most vulnerable stages protected by law, matching the findings of professional polls commissioned yearly by the Pro-Life Campaign.

However, it’s been disturbing how often the recommendations of these bodies have gone the opposite way, raising the question how come the government who appoints most members of these bodies picks people unrepresentative of the majority view in the general public?

It points to a need for democratic oversight of such appointments to clarify why people with views differing sharply from the majority are appointed more often than those who share the commonly held pro-life views.

And in the run up to legislation in relation to frozen embryos the pattern has been repeated in the Commission on Assisted Human Reproduction and the Irish Council for Bioethics.

For example, in the report of the Irish Council for Bioethics published in 2008, Council members were unanimous, 13 to 0, in recommending allowing that human embryos to be destroyed to extract stem cells for research, but 77% of the members of the public who responded to their question on this issue took the opposite view*

Another recent example of a preponderance of public submissions being pro-life now seems to have been the Medical Council’s advertising for public submissions in its preparations for the seventh edition of its Ethical Guide.

Recently, in preparing an article for the Irish Medical Times, Dara Gantly discovered that the Council received “more than 6,500 submissions from members of the public”, “the overwhelming majority” of which were pro-life. You can read this article which includes some analysis of the Pro Life Campaign’s submission here

In the run up to the publication of government proposals following R v. R, it is politically significant that the preponderance of pro-life submissions mirrors Pro-Life Campaign poll findings that most people support Dáil legislation to protect human embryos.

Or to look at it the other way round, the fact that the majority of submissions match what the majority of the general public think bespeaks a political energy and organisational commitment in the pro-life community likely to translate into a political dividend for election candidates supporting legislation protecting embryos and a political cost for those who don’t.

The latest research on abortion shows a substantial majority of the public supporting a prohibition on abortion, while allowing necessary medical interventions in pregnancy to save the life of the mother.

The Pro-Life Campaign commissioned Millward Brown Lansdowne to carry out the survey on a quota controlled sample of 950 people aged 18+ between 27th January and 6th February 2010.

The question reads as follows:

“Are you in favour of, or opposed to, constitutional protection for the unborn that prohibits abortion but allows the continuation of the existing practice of intervention to save a mother’s life in accordance with Irish medical ethics?”

The finding shows that 70% support constitutional protection for the unborn, 13% oppose it and 16% don’t know or have no opinion.

What distinguishes this finding from polls showing support for abortion is the distinction it makes between necessary medical interventions in pregnancy and induced abortion where the life of the unborn child is directly targeted.[1]

This is a critical ethical distinction which abortion advocates constantly seek to blur. Some abortion advocates claim that legalised abortion ‘confronts the reality of crisis pregnancy.’ However, this contention ignores the humanity of the unborn child throughout the entire nine months of pregnancy and the latest research highlighting the negative consequences of abortion for women.[2]

If we are to have a genuinely honest debate on abortion we cannot arbitrarily airbrush the unborn child out of the debate or the many testimonies of women who regret their abortions.

As a country we should be immensely proud of the fact that Ireland without abortion is currently listed as the safest country in the world in which to be pregnant, according to the latest UN survey on maternal health.[3]

All human beings share a common dignity by virtue of their humanity. To deny the right to life simply because the unborn child is at an early stage of development completely undermines an authentic vision of human rights.

The Millward Brown Lansdowne research published today is hugely reassuring as it points to overwhelming public support for an ethos of care for both mother and baby during pregnancy.

Pádraig O’Laimhín, writing in the “Irish Catholic” newspaper, noted that the recent news mentions of the death toll of the terrible Omagh Bombing in Northern Ireland “specifically mention the killing of twins in their mother’s womb”.

He continued, “The hideous crime of killing so many is quite rightly shown as more brutal because of the killing of these two innocents”. But many in the media, he noted, “are being very hypocritical when they do not show equal disgust at the slaughter of other babies intentionally killed”.

High-profile cases jump to mind, but the silent death toll of abortion makes the tragedy of the Northern Troubles pale almost to insignificance. Such terrible injustice does not merit an objective response or even a balanced interpretation. In the face of injustice, our response must be proactive.

It is time now for the government and other leaders to bring in legislation to protect the unprotected and bring about the necessary constitutional change to reinstate true esteem for the life of the unborn and their mothers. Standing by is not an option. The Irish Catholic. March 18.